1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a processing apparatus such as a copying machine having a function of collecting logs, a control method of the processing apparatus, and a storage medium storing therein a control program for executing the control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
An environment where a dedicated server is not placed and an image forming apparatus is used as a server so that a network can be operated without a dedicated server is becoming increasingly widespread in offices. In such a situation, an image forming apparatus (a master unit) having higher performance, for example, having a high-speed CPU or a high-capacity memory, has a server function, including a device management function of managing a plurality of image forming apparatus (slave units) on a network.
In such a device management for slave units by a master unit, logs are collected from the slave units. Logs include normal logs (job logs) such as the number of printed sheets, and error logs for identifying a failure when an error occurs. Since an error log includes a lot of information so as to identify a failure, the data of the log is large in size.
Since a storage area of a slave unit in which logs are memorized is generally small in size, when the storage area becomes full, the logs are removed in order of occurrence. Therefore, the slave unit cannot store many error logs. Accordingly, the slave unit has to send error logs to its master unit one by one every time an error occurs in order to prevent logs not stored in the slave unit from being cleared.
However, if the master unit unconditionally accepts large logs in size such as error logs from a plurality of slave units, the performance of the master unit itself may degrade. In order to address the problem, increasing the memory capacity of the slave units is difficult because of cost. Consequently, what is needed is a technique for collecting error logs efficiently even if there is only a given amount of memory for storing error logs.
The following prior art (network system) is known that performs such log collection (e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2001-147839). This network system includes a plurality of slave units, and a master unit which collects logs from the slave units through a network. The master unit has a priority definition table in which the priorities of the slave units are defined. When the amount of logs stored in a slave unit reaches a predetermined amount, the master unit collects the logs only when the priority of the slave unit is higher than a preset priority. In addition, a priority is assigned to information contained in a log, and when the amount of logs stored in the slave unit reaches a predetermined amount, the master unit collects only logs whose priorities assigned to information are higher than a preset priority.
However, the above prior art relates to collection of logs to which a specified or higher priority is given, based on a static priority preset to individual slave units or information. Therefore, priorities cannot be set dynamically depending on the operating situations of the slave units. Further, in the situation in which the master unit itself has to perform various functions without degrading its performance, whether or not a log should be accepted cannot be determined dynamically depending on the condition of the master unit itself.
As just described, with the prior art, sufficiently efficient error log collection has not yet been realized.